Brian Aldiss - The Complete Short Stories - The 1950s

But I begin to sound sceptical. That is my error. I happen to have little love for my fellow men; the thought of the Massacre is always with me, even after all this time. I could not deny that the trend of things at Mokulgu and elsewhere, the constant urbanisation, was almost unavoidable. But as a man with some sensibility, I regretted that human advance should always be over the corpse of Nature. That a counterblast was being prepared even then did not occur to me.

From where we sat over our southern wines, both lake and town were partially visible, the forests in the immediate area having been demolished long ago. The town was already blazing with light, the lake looked already dark, a thing preparing for night. And to our left, standing out with a clarity which suggested yet more rain to come, stretched the rolling jungles of the Congo tributaries.

For at least three hundred miles in that direction, man had not invaded: there lived the pygmies, flourishing without despoiling. That area, the Congo Source land, would be the next to go; Jubal, indeed, was the spearhead of the attack. But for my generation at least that vast tract of primitive beauty would stand, and I was selfishly glad of it. I always gained more pleasure from a tree than population increase statistics.

Jubal caught something of the expression on my face.

‘The power we are releasing here will last for ever,’ he said. ‘It’s already changing – improving – the entire economy of the area. At last, at long last, Africa is realising her potentialities.’

His voice held almost a tremor, and I thought that this passion for Progress was the secret of his strength.

‘You cling too much to the past, Rog,’ he added.

‘Why all this digging and tunnelling and wrenching up of riverbeds?’ I asked. ‘Would not atomics have been a cheaper and easier answer?’

‘No,’ he said decisively. ‘This system puts to use idle water; once in operation, everything is entirely self-servicing. Besides, uranium is none too plentiful, water is. Venus has no radioactive materials, I believe?’

This sounded to me like an invitation to change the subject. I accepted it.

‘They’ve found none yet,’ I assented. ‘But I can speak with no authority. I went purely as a tourist – and a glorious trip it was.’

‘It must be wonderful to be so many million miles nearer the sun,’ he said. It was the sort of plain remark I had often heard him make. On others’ lips it might have sounded platitudinous; in his quiet tones I caught a note of sublimity.

‘I shall never get to Venus,’ he said. ‘There’s too much work to be done here. You must have seen some marvels there, Rog!’

‘Yes … Yet nothing so strange as an elephant.’

‘And they’ll have a breathable atmosphere in a decade, I hear?’

‘So they say. They certainly are doing wonders … You know, Jubal, I shall have to go back then. You see, there’s a feeling, er – something, a sort of expectancy. No, not quite that; it’s hard to explain – ’ I don’t converse well. I ramble and mumble when I have something real to say. I could say it to a woman, or I could write it on paper; but Jubal is a man of action, and when I did say it, I deliberately omitted emotional overtones and lost interest in what I said. ‘It’s like courting a woman in armour with the visor closed, on Venus now. You can see it, but you can’t touch or smell or breathe it. Always an airtight dome or a space suit between you and actuality. But in ten years’ time, you’ll be able to run your bare fingers through the sand, feel the breezes on your cheek … Well, you know what I mean, er – sort of feel her undressed.’

He was thinking – I saw it in his eye: ‘Rog’s going to go all poetic on me.’ He said: ‘And you approve of that – the change over of atmospheres?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yet you don’t approve of what we’re doing here, which is just the same sort of thing?’

He had a point. ‘You’re upsetting a delicate balance here,’ I said gingerly. ‘A thousand ecological factors are swept by the board just so that you can grind these waters through your turbines. And the same thing’s happened at Owen Falls over on Lake Victoria … But on Venus there’s no such balance. It’s just a clean page waiting for man to write what he will on it. Under that CO 2blanket, there’s been no spark of life: the mountains are bare of moss, the valleys lie innocent of grass; in the geological strata, no fossils sleep; no amoebae move in the sea. But what you’re doing here …’

‘People!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve got people to consider. Babies need to be born, mouths must be fed. A man must live. Your sort of feelings are all very well – they make good poems – but I consider the people . I love the people. For them I work …’

He waved his hands, overcome by his own grandiose visions. If the passion for Progress was his strength, the fallacy inherent in the idea was his secret weakness. I began to grow warm.

‘You get good conditions for these people, they procreate forthwith. Next generation, another benefactor will have to step forward and get good conditions for the children. That’s Progress, eh?’ I asked maliciously.

‘I see you so rarely, Rog; don’t let’s quarrel,’ he said meekly. ‘I just do what I can. I’m only an engineer.’

That was how he always won an altercation. Before meekness I have no defence.

The sun had finished another day. With the sudden darkness came chill. Jubal pressed a button, and glass slid round the veranda, enclosing us. Like Venus, I thought; but here you could still smell that spicy, bosomy scent which is the breath of dear Africa herself. On Venus, the smells are imported.

We poured some more wine and talked of family matters. In a short while his wife, Sloe, joined us. I began to feel at home. The feeling was only partly psychological; my glands were now beginning to readjust fully to normal conditions after their long days in space travel.

J-Casta also appeared. Him I was less pleased to see. He was the boss type, the strong arm man: as Jubal’s underling, he pandered wretchedly to him and bullied everyone else on the project. He (and there were many others like him, unfortunately) thought of the Massacre as man’s greatest achievement. This evening, in the presence of his superiors, after a preliminary burst of showing off, he was quiet enough.

When they pressed me to, I talked of Venus. As I spoke, back rushed that humbling – but intoxicating – sense of awe to think I had actually lived to stand in full possession of my many faculties on that startling planet. The same feeling had often possessed me on Mars. And (as justifiably) on Earth.

The vision chimed, and an amber light blinked drowsily off and on in Jubal’s tank. Even then, no premonition of catastrophe; since then, I can never see that amber heartbeat without anxiety.

Jubal answered it, and a man’s face swam up in the tank to greet him. They talked; I could catch no words, but the sudden tension was apparent. Sloe went over and put her arm round Jubal’s shoulder.

‘Something up,’ J-Casta commented.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘That’s Chief M-Shawn on the Vision – from Owenstown, over on Lake Victoria.’

Then Jubal flashed off and came slowly back to where we were sitting.

‘That was M-Shawn,’ he said. ‘The level of Lake Victoria has just dropped three inches.’ He lit a cheroot with clumsy fingers, his eyes staring in mystification far beyond the flame.

‘Dam OK, boss?’ J-Casta asked.

‘Perfectly. They’re going to phone us if they find anything …’

‘Has this happened before?’ I asked, not quite able to understand their worried looks.